Edvalsons in England: Gearing Up for a New Term!

We had our first week of classes as students trickle in from their Christmas break. This past week and the week ahead are mainly examination periods for our students. Most are attending Leeds University, which they call Leeds Uni. Others are attending Leeds Beckett University and Leeds College of Music. This past week concluded our fall term of Institute courses and we started our new class this week teaching the Institute Cornerstone course called “Jesus Christ and the Everlasting Gospel.” It technically doesn’t begin until this week but we created an introductory lesson for last week before we start in earnest this coming week.

We had our first experience developing a power point lesson with accompanying inserts of musical and video content which was a new skill for both of us. On Monday evening we reconvened our Family Home Evening group after a 3 week hiatus. It was a small group but we had 2 new Chinese speaking friends (investigators) and one new less active member who hadn’t been here for a few years. Wednesday brought our first student cooked dinners as we kick off a new event called “Come Dine With Me” where Institute students sign up to be guest chefs and cook dinner that night. Our Institute Student Council President made a chicken curry which everyone enjoyed. We then had a small but really good first class at our Cornerstone Course. Sister Edvalson taught the lesson and Elder Edvalson handled the technology. Since it was given on Dana’s birthday, I was able to slip in an extra power point slide at the end with a Happy Birthday notice and cheesy song to celebrate together. We had a Costco sheet cake which everyone enjoyed over the next 2 days!

Thursday brought a bigger crowd back for our main night of dinner and classes. We made taco salad and it was well received, in fact we had twice as many come for dinner as had signed up, but we managed to have enough. We had 35 to 40 for the main class, so we’re getting back into the pre-holiday numbers that we expected.

Friday morning we had about 8 for our breakfast devotional. We then hosted everyone who could come to see President Monson’s Funeral which we live streamed here at 7 pm local time. We had 8 come for that event and served “Dada Cookies” for refreshment. (Tim’s mother’s chocolate drop cookies). All week long the Institute was rewired for new Wi-Fi routers with higher speed capacity so we were glad when that was completed.

Saturday brought us to our quarterly senior missionary social outing. We went to the Royal Armory (museum) here in Leeds with all the senior missionary couples and President & Sister Turvey. It was surprisingly fun and we enjoyed seeing some live performances explaining some historical battles in the English Civil War and some in India. We also got to see the swords from Lord of the Rings and lots of armor both for humans, horses and even elephants! We said goodbye to the Morgans who are returning to Australia and hello to 2 sisters from California and Arizona who are serving as companions. There were 18 of us in all—8 companionships plus the Turveys.

Sunday we visited the Leeds 4^th Ward (We did the Bradford Ward last Sunday) in our efforts to visit each of the 10 units (8 ward and 2 branches) in the stake and publicize and recruit students to attend Institute. We take 2 of the Institute Student Council with us each week and have a wonderful time being with them as they talk with all the YSAs we can meet with. They call it going to church in the “party car” because we have such a good time with each other as we go.

The week flew by and here we are again on a Sunday evening looking at another full week of activities to plan and publicize. We love being here but miss the day to day contact with you, our family and friends. We are blessed as senior missionaries to have as frequent contact as we wish with our children and grandchildren, so that is definitely a plus to being a senior missionary! It is great to see the enthusiasm and love for the gospel that these YSAs and young missionaries have and to be a part of strengthening them and them strengthening us as we serve together!

Cheerio from across the pond!

Elder & Sister Edvalson